Over the last decade or so, malicious software (commonly referred to as “malware”) has become a pervasive problem for electronic devices in communication over a network. In general, malware is computer code that may execute an exploit, namely information that attempts to take advantage of a vulnerability in software running on a targeted computer in order to adversely influence or attack normal operations of that computer. For instance, an exploit may be adapted to take advantage of a vulnerability in order to either co-opt operation of a computer or misappropriate, modify or delete data stored within the computer.
More specifically, malicious network content is a type of malware that may be distributed over a network, such as malware hosted by a website being one or more servers operating on a network according to a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) standard or other well-known standard. For instance, malicious network content may be actively downloaded and installed on a computer, without the approval or knowledge of its user, simply by the computer accessing the malicious website. As an illustrative embodiment, the malicious network content may be embedded within objects associated with web pages hosted by the malicious website or may enter a computer upon receipt or opening of an electronic mail (email) message. For example, an email message may contain an attachment, such as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file, with embedded malicious executable programs.
Various processes and appliances have been employed to detect the presence of malicious network content on a computer. For instance, a two-phase malware detection appliance currently exists for detecting malware contained in network traffic. However, both phases (static and dynamic) conducted by this conventional malware detection appliance rely heavily on hard-coded rules to control their operations. More specifically, conventional malware detection appliances may include a “factory installed” operating system (OS) software image along with a corresponding release of a software image package for use in the dynamic phase. The software image package includes logical monitors for a virtual run-time environment in the dynamic phase. In the event of the customer-installed malware detection appliance experiencing significant incidences, such as a high rate of false positives or false negatives in malware detection for example, customers may be provided with a new version of the OS software image or a new version of the software image package. However, such releases are slow to fruition, normally taking 4-6 months (including development and quality assurance testing). Moreover, the new software image package may still not be tuned to threats (e.g., Advanced Persistent Threats “APT attacks”) that target specific IT resources at a specific customer (enterprise or agency), and may be days or weeks behind malware “developments” (e.g., introduced by malware authors or self-generated by polymorphic malware) as experienced by customers.